Space Marine 2 pulls its visual inspiration straight from the tabletop 

In the fiction of Warhammer 40,000, Space Marines are the ideal bio-engineered soldier, transhuman demigods that are armed to the teeth with bolter guns, power fists, and heavily engineered armor. They’re the poster boys of the setting, and the original Space Marine video game in 2011 was one of the best manifestations of that ultimate power fantasy. As we get closer to the launch of Space Marine 2 in September, developer Saber Interactive has revealed more about how the game borrows heavily from the tabletop game and its visuals to help bring Titus and his squad to life.

“[Our visual inspiration] is 99% tabletop models and almost nothing else. Believe it or not, production of every character in our game started with building the miniature,” Dmitriy Grigorenko, lead game designer, told Polygon in a recent email interview. “It’s easier to understand how the model works and how it is supposed to be animated if you can rotate it with your own hands. Of course some adjustments had to be made so the ending character doesn’t look like a toy that was scaled up, but it’s all starting with miniatures. In the end, even people who weren’t Warhammer fans have a massive collection of miniatures at their desks.”

Image: Saber Interactive/Focus Entertainment

In the campaign, Titus will be significantly more dour and reserved than his original depiction. “Titus was taken away by the Inquisition, and that took its toll on him. That happened because he was very open, and it cost him dearly,” said Grigorenko. “Now he is back in the very same company he was leading in the past and almost nobody knows him.”

Titus has to battle his way through two planets; the first is a Death World, a place that is barely suitable for human habitation. “The entire surface of the planet is covered with deadly and completely inhospitable jungles,” shared Grigorenko. “It was never a nice place to live to begin with, but now with a Tyranid infestation, it is even worse.”

The second planet is a Hive World, similar to the setting of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. Hive cities pack billions of people in giant vertical cities that run from subterranean hab-blocks to massive gothic spires. These are dense, highly detailed environments, and when the Tyranids swarm en masse, the game can get busy. During a technical demo I tried last year, controlling Titus felt similar to how he felt in the original Space Marine. The foes, however — the swarming, endless hordes of Tyranids — are quite different.

“Tyranid swarms were a huge technical challenge, of course. But we have our own proprietary engine that is perfect for tasks like that,” said Grigorenko. “A previous version of the engine was used for World War Z; it allowed us to have 500 zombies on screen back then. However, with Space Marine 2, we had to go even bigger in terms of both quality and quantity.”

While the single-player campaign is all about facing insurmountable odds against an asymmetrical enemy, the multiplayer focuses on six-versus-six combat between squads of Space Marines.

Image: Saber Interactive/Focus Entertainment

The Ultramarines and Thousand Sons are both Space Marine chapters that show up in the main campaign, albeit with completely different histories and allegiances. The multiplayer gets even more granular. Players can engage in Space Marine battles, picking one of six classes: Tactical, Assault, Vanguard, Bulwark, Sniper, and Heavy. With the class loadouts and customization, players can also switch up every individual piece of their armor — gauntlets, war gear, greaves, helms, pauldrons, and breastplates can all be changed out. With this in-depth system, players can recreate bright yellow Imperial Fists, secretive and cloaked Dark Angels, the Nurgle-infested Death Guard, and furious berzerkers of Khorne.

It’s awesome to see so much love and attention paid to the tabletop game, which gave us the original depiction of Space Marines. Hopefully, we can see some of the fun tabletop variants original as cosmetics, like the classic beaky helmet. I haven’t played Space Marine 2 since the technical demo, but the glimpses coming out of multiplayer content are intriguing.

The tabletop game can be a bit slow, with rolling dice, measuring movement, and occasionally checking a codex — but Space Marine 2 looks like a much swifter and visceral take on transhuman combat and eternal war, while still paying homage to the roots of the setting.